I was asked this in an online forum, and my answer got too long to manage. Here’s my infallible prediction. How did I do?

Orthodoxy: Little visible change, zero substantive change. Increasing numbers and cultural impact. Progress toward a single American Archdiocese, but still not there yet.

Catholicism: Neither women priests nor married priests will happen. Increasing disaffection among liberal American Catholics leading to a significant decrease in attendance. Identification as Catholic will be increasingly cultural rather than creedal. This trend, combined with decreasing numbers of men seeking the priesthood, will force additional parish churches to close. This will be slightly offset by conversions from Protestantism, resulting in American Catholic liturgy and pastoral care becoming effectively more traditional. In northern Europe, Catholicism may fade into a cultural memory, but in North America, a leaner, more boldly traditional Catholicism will recover its equilibrium and continue to be a voice of conscience and stability.

Reformed Christians: Continuing personality issues, but overall the hardcore Reformed will still look and act a lot like they do today, because (almost uniquely among Protestants) Reformed folks know and value their tradition. The edgy/emergey segment will contribute a few cultural differences.

Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, UCC: Increasing convergence so that they resemble each other almost interchangeably, while de-emphasizing troublesome doctrinal issues until their emphasis on social issues rather than personal salvation turns them into Christian-branded social service agencies. In each movement the conservative outliers will continue to peel off in schisms embodying a previous generation’s norm. Many of these etremely conservative daughter groups will identify strongly with the little-o orthodox “Great Tradition” (cf. Tom Oden)

Anglicanism outside the US and UK: Few significant or visible changes, except increasing numbers, especially in Africa and Latin America, where Anglicanism is conservative in liturgy and ethos.

Conservative Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists in North America: I foresee growth and prosperity for individual parishes and dioceses, but overall a continuing fragmentation. Fifty years ago, these groups were culturally relevant and could provide nostalgia for returning Christians; now, in increasingly-unchurched America, they’re culturally unfamiliar but not yet old enough to make a virtue of ancient weirdness the way Eastern Orthodox do.

Non-charismatic nondenominations will find their kids growing up effectively charismatic nondenoms, with more affinity for styles of contemporary music than for their parents’ doctrinal self-definition. The trend of people choosing congregations based on music and childcare will continue to grow. In-depth teaching of historical doctrine will continue to be a novelty.

Baptist will continue to be a useless word for describing a set of beliefs or practices, as practically every form of Christian belief and worship can be found among self-described Baptists.

Charismatic nondenominations: Same story. In the absence of doctrinal accountability, these will continue to generate new approaches and practices every decade or two.

Old-school Pentecostals (e.g. Foursquare, Assemblies of God, Church of God in Christ, Church of God of Prophecy) in suburbs and wealthy areas will continue to develop in unpredictable ways, ensuring that every generation is nostalgic for a lost experience and baffled by what their churches have become. In the 90s and 00s, the Toronto Blessing, Brownsville Revival, Kansas City Prophets, and new prosperity teachings revisited mid-20th-century phenomena such as the Latter Rain, Manifest Sons of God, and the earlier health-and-prosperity movement springing from EW Kenyon. But the more recent iteration was characterized by a new cultural ignorance of Christian belief or history, which freed it to become crazier, faster. By contrast, change in urban, inner-city contexts and in rural areas will be minimal: Urban churches will continue to be matriarchal and rural churches patriarchal.

TL;DR: in 50 years you’ll see recognizable Orthodox, Catholics and Reformed… and a vast spectrum of Everybody Else, many of them changing in significant ways and seeing that as a virtue.

Now ... at the rate America is decaying we have to first accept America is gone ... unless there is a bloody uprising .. America is gone and we are the only nation sending missionaries out into the world to teach people about Jesus, thus .. with no preacher, the Word cannot be heard nor known.

AntiChrist enters stage left and the planet is done for .... God said so.

5
posted on 12/21/2012 3:57:59 PM PST
by knarf
(I say things that are true ... I have no proof ... but they're true)

Seems like this is an Orthodox perspective. Much is true, but it leaves out much. And he seems ignorant of what’s going on in Baptist circles, both SBC and others.

Yes, Orthodoxy is growing, and a group of dear friends of mine moved there about 30 years ago from a national evangelical ministry. They brought an evangelical perspective into the Orthodox that is still having it’s effect, though with the recent death of Peter Guilquist, an old friend, word is the evangelical influence is diminishing.

What he leaves out is the huge, growing disaffection with old form traditional Christianity - a religion of services, ceremony and outreach works. A troubling “authoritarianism” is growing in many evangelical churches as they see Christians who love God but don’t want to be a part of their membership. Many teach an absolute authority for the local pastor, totally foreign to scripture, and insistence on membership as a means of their control. In the end, this is driving thousands from the organized church. Even while these pastors pound their pulpits in protest and condemnation of same.

The author also leaves out the move of house churches which is growing geometrically. I think he is totally unaware of anything outside denominations. It has it’s share of crazies, but also has a healthy component of wholly committed, strong Christians who emphasize first a close personal relationship with Christ, and second a practical, living means of laying their lives down for one another as it was in the early church. No formal leaders, just Christians loving God and one another - and neighbors - in very real, practical ways. Could be the most real form of Christianity that there is.

BTW, over almost 50 years, I have worked in, alongside, and loved Christians of almost every stripe, color and name both inside denominations and outside of them.....love them all....in each I’ve seen something of Christ the others do not have.....and I can’t wait until our oneness in the body of Christ is a reality.......when we are with Him.....

I prefer to live the best I can, so that if it happens tomorrow I’m in as good standing before God as I can be. I could be hit by a car tomorrow as well, more or less the same results about keeping myself in good standing with God.

This presumes that things will continue to move in the same direction as they have over the past several decades.

That would seem to be a safe assumption—unless God intervenes with another great revival.

The history of Christianity has, over the centuries, tended to see decay and taking things for granted—until some force intervenes and everything changes.

The Great Awakening is an experience most Americans have heard of—or at least used to have heard of before history ceased to be taught. And there have been many similar awakenings and conversion experiences in the Catholic Church over the years.

And these things can overflow. Methodism not only revived Christianity in England after it had almost died during the eighteenth century, but it overflowed into the Church of England and elsewhere, as well.

Obviously, there is no way to predict such happenings. They happen if and when God wills.

Yes, He is coming. He said so, the angels in Acts 1 said so, and the scripture says so.

When? Could be any second. Or could be after I’m dead and gone...almost all believers close to God have believed His coming was imminent for 2,000 years.

But the question is not WHEN He is coming - for no one knows.

The question is, as He repeatedly told us - are we ready for His coming? Are we looking for, expecting His coming? Are we even longing for it, crying out as the last words of the Bible, “Come, Lord Jesus!” ??????

Because He told us He is coming when no one is expecting it. No one.

There is nothing here, but a dark, quickly decaying world - that still needs to hear the gospel.

But He is coming for a people who long for, and who are looking for and expecting His coming......

Things have changed a great deal in the last 100 years and organized religions have changed with them. World events will likely shape organized religions even more as we bounce from one crisis to the next, one war to the next or today's muslim extremists to the next.

Sooner rather than later, especially with obamacare's various legal challenges, we will confront both abortion and same sex marriage and biblical teachings.

We've been dancing around the edges, flirting with making holy what is explicitly forbidden, and ignoring the cognitive dissonance that flows freely from such willful blindness.

More than likely, just as with the rebirth of Israel, we will experience some prophetic event or more come to pass that will call more to scripture and revive a more pragmatic, practical approach (aka "fear of God") to religion. We may choose differently at that point. If so, we'll have a chance to see things through to the end.

Otherwise, I think we'll go down the same dark path every other society so afflicted with modernity as ours has become, with churches becoming less relevant as they move farther away from the principles and teachings that define who and what they are.

When it all comes apart, some will call it Judgment.

19
posted on 12/21/2012 4:40:57 PM PST
by GBA
(Here in the Matrix, life is but a dream.)

Fifty years from now, worldwide secularization will be much more dominant than it is now. Worldwide leftists will continue to criticize Christianity and suppress Christianity much worse than they do now. Worldwide Islam will be much more common. Worldwide Christians will be forced to practice their faith in secret.

20
posted on 12/21/2012 4:43:58 PM PST
by johnthebaptistmoore
(The world continues to be stuck in a "all leftist, all of the time" funk. BUNK THE FUNK!)

No one knows. You certainly don't know, nor should you be making predictions that it will be soon. We may very well have thousands, even millions of years till that particular event occurs. Some people in every generation think theirs is the last, and they are always wrong.

Fifty years from now, worldwide secularization will be much more dominant than it is now.

On the path we are currently on, this part of your statement is probably true. Then again, one giant worldwide depression or something like it could completely change the direction the world is going in. But yeah, I think Western Christianity is likely to continue weakening as populations in the Western world secularize.

Straight line extrapolation is likely to break somewhere. Let an end times type persecution scenario break out, and all bets as to how it looks are off.

Orthodoxy: Little visible change, zero substantive change

Because, of course, they never change. I'm being sarcastic. Disaffected evangelicals coming in will bring in evangelical attitudes. Perhaps the Orthoborg can assimilate them, perhaps not.

Catholicism:

Same comments as for the Orthodox.

Reformed Christians:

If not for the current Internet fueled popularity of the "Young, Restless and Reformed" crowd, the author probably wouldn't even be aware of them. The hard core Reformed, those that think that it's about more than "the five points", number a half million or so in N.Am, laboring and worshiping in obscurity. Even adding in the Reformed Baptists wouldn't change that number much.

Lutherans, Episcopagans, Presbyterians, UCC

If there's anything left at all, a shrunken and whithered leftist core, supported by endowments and old money. The gay & the grey don't reproduce well, so where does that leave you? (That's a rhetorical question.)

They'll sell their empty buildings cheap to the Muslims and the charismatics.

Non-charismatic nondenominations

Who knows where they'll end up. Too many different directions. There's the charismawhacky direction. There's the church as mall, church as business megachurch model. Both, I think, end in their own sort of disaster.

24
posted on 12/21/2012 5:13:24 PM PST
by Lee N. Field
("You keep using that verse, but I do not think it means what you think it means." --I. Montoya)

Fifty years from now, worldwide secularization will be much more dominant than it is now.

On the path we are currently on, this part of your statement is probably true. Then again, one giant worldwide depression or something like it could completely change the direction the world is going in. But yeah, I think Western Christianity is likely to continue weakening as populations in the Western world secularize.

Predictions are hard to make. Like you said, if we stay on this path, you're right but 50 years is a long time. A lot of things can happen, world wide collapse due to some catastrophe and/or atomic war, perhaps a war with Islam and so on. In 1980, I would have laughed at the idea of the USSR collapsing in the 1989/91 period although I did wonder if I was right in 1983 where I figured that one day the US would be like the USSR and the USSR like the US.

About the Orthodox and Catholic churches, I did see one interesting reference in an old cartoon made in the Soviet Union called “Christmas Toys” from 1924, being an animation junky I am. They referred to the Orthodox Church as “The Dead Church” and the Roman Catholic Church as “The Living Church.” You can find the cartoon on YouTube. I wonder where they got those terms from.

>>"For you know quite well that the day of the Lord's return will come unexpectedly, like a thief in the night."--1 Thessalonians 5:2

Why do people always put that verse out there all alone? That is not conveying the meaning of that passage. Look at what follows it.

1 Thessalonians 5:1 But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. 2 For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. 3 For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. 4 But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.

There is much in scripture that shows us the seasons to watch for so that it doesnt come upon us like a thief in the night. That is talking about the children of darkness, not the children of light. We who are Christians have the scripture to show us what to look for.

The big story of world religion over the next 50 years will be the flourishing of the Christian church in China. Fujian province is supposedly more than 20% Christian today, and growing amazingly fast. The rest of China is following. It is quite possible that China will be majority Christian within my lifetime, or at least my childrens’.

The big story of world religion over the next 50 years will be the flourishing of the Christian church in China. Fujian province is supposedly more than 20% Christian today, and growing amazingly fast. The rest of China is following. It is quite possible that China will be majority Christian within my lifetime, or at least my childrens’.

RE: The big story of world religion over the next 50 years will be the flourishing of the Christian church in China. Fujian province is supposedly more than 20% Christian today, and growing amazingly fast.

The more relevant question is this — What FORM will this Chinese Christianity take? Will it be Catholic? Orthodox? Mainline Protestant? Evangelical? Will it hold to the essentials of the Christian faith? Will a more free-wheeling form appear?

>>It's sad that it will take such a monumental event for the church to finally "be of one mind" still,better then than never I suppose!<<

Actually I think the true church is of one mind pretty much now. There are obviously some left to join the fold or the Rapture would have happened already. They are scattered around the globe and are affiliated with different organizations but when it comes to the heart they are of one mind.

>>I still fail to see how that translates Biblically to Christ coming back on or before 2062.<<

Israel became a nation again in 1948. The generation that saw that happen shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled. You would first need to understand Gabriels seventy weeks prophecy to Daniel. The second coming of Christ to this earth is preceded by a week of seven years. The church will be removed from this earth just prior to that seven year period. I was born in 1948. According to scripture a generation is 70 years.

"Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season? Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing" (Mat 24:44-46) Obviously the season Jesus is talking about is the one when He will appear.He says the servant giving spiritual food in due season will be blessed.Therefore He is telling us that that when He comes,blessed is that servant telling believers "He's coming".So yes it obviously matters a great deal.The fact that around a third of the Bible has to do with the prophetic should tell us that loud and clear.

2 Tim 1:7,8) For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord...for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.(Rev 19:10)

Mark 13:37 And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch

49
posted on 12/21/2012 10:04:10 PM PST
by mitch5501
("make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things ye shall never fall")

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